Soldiers are soldiers; always have been, always will be. From the Peloponnesian war to the invasion of Iraq, the archetype endures, whether the warrior comes at you with a sling and a spear or an M-40 and a rocket-launcher. Just as happens over and over again in Generation Kill, you can bet that Roman legionaries in Gaul and Spartan soldiers all at some point sat in their RACK or sentry posts, terminally bored after a hard day's killing, and bitched deep into the night about their "fuckin' pussy-retard officers".

In Generation Kill, the new Iraq war drama from the creators of The Wire, we get a state-of-the-(martial) art portrait of young men in a new war. This is the postmodern videogame/internet demographic, raised on Reaganism and post-1989 assumptions about American military power (underscored and amplified in the wake of 9/11), breastfed on MTV, YouTube and Fox News, born in peace, doomed to fight. They don't listen to Creedence; they aren't getting loaded in their tents or fragging their lieutenants; and, worst of all, there aren't any miniskirted hookers cooing, "Me love you looong time, GI!" Soldiers through the centuries may, at their core, remain the same but still, this ain't their daddies' war.

They're fighting HAJIS, not gooks or krauts, and "global terrorism" rather than "godless communism"; rice paddies and jungles give way to sandstorms and ancient Mesopotamian cities; flamethrowers and grenades yield to RPGs, FIDDIES and JAVELIN anti-tank systems. But they share with their forebears a rich and detailed argot derived from battle, boredom, and bullshitting in barracks. Beyond the obvious, phonetic alphabet stuff (OSCAR MIKE, FOOT-MOBILE), their lexicon extends from the prosaic (BLUE/RED) and the functional (CLEARED HOT), to the inventive repurposing of military tech talk ("Oh, he's a belt-fed motherfucker all right!"), and constant deployment of the simple, multi-applicable noun "ass"). And everywhere, the Marine Corps' clarion call: "GET SOME!" In the US, early promo discs of the show were sent out with a 15-page glossary.

As the First Reconnaissance Battalion of the United States Marine Corps thundered towards Baghdad in the opening days of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, right at the very speartip of the first incursion, they were joined by embedded Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright. Initially viewed with suspicion, Wright won over his guardians after telling them he'd reviewed over 8,000 hardcore porno movies for Hustler magazine (full disclosure: I knew Wright slightly when I did the very same there). After that they treated him like a mascot. When he returned home, he compiled his Rolling Stone dispatches into Generation Kill, which was an immediate bestseller.

Lucky for us, it was snapped up by exactly the right people to do the project justice: Wire creators David Simon and Ed Burns. Just as, between them, they brought to that show the weathered perspectives of a Vietnam vet, an ex-cop, ex-journalist, and ex-schoolteacher, Gen Kill benefits from their off-Hollywood thinking.

We think of marines too often as the refuse of blasted ghettos and barrios and economically hollowed-out Southern small towns - and many of these men are from exactly those places - but our two main characters, sergeant Brad Colbert and corporal Ray Person, are respectively an upper middle-class architect's son and a kid who once planned to study philosophy at Vanderbilt university. (Colbert, nicknamed "Iceman" cools out his squad before SCHWACKING by murmuring, "Stay frosty, gents," and Person routinely yowls Avril Lavigne's Sk8tr Boi as he drives into firefights). This bickering pair - "like an old married couple," as Wright dubs them - are at the centre of a vivid cast of enduring marine archetypes. There's the possibly psychotic rookie Twombley, a dead-ringer for (WHISKEY TANGO) Spike Jonze in Three Kings, an utterly incomprehensible backwoods Southerner sergeant-major and a colonel nicknamed "Godfather" because he croaks like Brando. There are the usual incompetent officers, all with superbly dismissive nicknames: "Captain America", who is more dangerous to his own side than the enemy, and ENCINO MAN, an apelike, slowpoke lieutenant named after the disinterred caveman in the movie of the same name.

But despite their uniforms and militarised exteriors, these young men all emerge as fully rounded, human people from real places, high on the magical toxins of war and unit cohesion. As in The Wire, the dialogue soars aloft on wings of profanity and realistic, deftly used tech talk, and the bloodshed, when it comes, is vivid and stomach-churning. For the time being,or until the next new war starts, this is how the USMC and the grunts' war in Iraq will be perceived.

• Generation Kill, Sun 25 January, 10pm, FX

Glossary

In order of appearance (with added extras)

PAINT ME Illuminate the target, please

DEVIL DOG Marine

SCREWBY That sucks! or possibly that rocks!

M-40 Standard-issue marine sniper rifle

RACK Bed, cot, hole in the ground - any place for sleeping

HAJI Derogative term for any Iraqi/Muslim/Arab. See also: HABUDABI

RPG Rocket propelled grenade

FIDDIES 50-calibre machine guns

JAVELIN Anti-tank missile

OSCAR MIKE On the move (phonetic alphabet)

FOOT-MOBILEPerson on foot

BLUE Friendly

RED Hostile

CLEARED HOT Permission to fire

GET SOMEUbiquitous marine war cry, meaning get some battle zone experience, spill some blood or, on occasion, "Get some (pussy)!"